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The case for increasing wages to cut the welfare bill

Writing in today’s Times Philip Collins produces a powerful and eloquent article arguing that we should cut the welfare bill by increasing wages. What’s more, he argues for a more moral form of capitalism to underpin it.

So what’s brought this on? Well, today JRF published our annual Minimum Income Standards report. This research asks members of the public what are the goods and services every household needs to be able to afford in order to achieve a minimum acceptable standard of living in the UK. As Collins notes:

Whether or not you agree that a few pence a week for Blu-tack is necessary, most of the costlier items are hard to dispute and they come to quite a price.

And our research shows the cost of that decent standard of living is rising fast – up 25 per cent over the last five years, higher than the official rate of inflation, which was 17 per cent for the same period. This means people today need much higher earnings just to afford the same standard of living they had five years ago. As Collins argues:

The gap between the minimally decent life and reality is growing. People on low incomes are subject to a higher rate of inflation than those who are a little richer … The gap between the life that people think others should be able to afford, in a rich and lucky country, and the life that most people lead is huge.

So what would it take for people to afford a better standard of living? The research costs the basket of goods and services people say they need for a decent standard of living, and works out what that means for how much you need to earn, once tax and benefits have been factored in. The resulting hourly wage rates are substantially higher than the national minimum wage (which is currently £6.19 per hour). A single person would need to earn £8.16 an hour while a couple with two children would need to earn at least £9.91 an hour each.

Collins argues employers have responded to this challenge before and they should do so again, learning from historical figures like Joseph Rowntree:

When he opened his chocolate factory in York in 1869, Rowntree established good pay, housing benefits and the first occupational pension scheme for his workers...

He understood that the corporation was and is a public entity, underpinned and given a license to operate by the laws of limited liability. He felt, as all the pioneers of the American joint stock company did too, that his private accumulation came with a public obligation, which he fulfilled by paying his people well.

Low paid jobs remain prevalent in the UK, and a fifth of the workforces is on low pay. This costs us all dear as the state subsidises low income working households through the tax credit system.

For those employers not persuaded by the moral case for change Collins argues the rate of the minimum wage should be ratcheted up as a backstop, a view that is starting to gain more support. This undoubtedly has to be part of the solution, but alone will not solve the problem. Instead a more comprehensive strategy is required that looks at why we have such an endemic low pay problem in the UK; what is driving up the cost of essential like housing, childcare and energy; and yes, as unpopular as it is right now, how best to support people through the social security and tax systems.

Katie Schmuecker is a Policy and Research Manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF)

MP Michelle Thomson's full speech on rape at 14: "I am a survivor"

On Thursday, the independent MP for Edinburgh West Michelle Thomson used a debate marking the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to describe her own experience of rape. Thomson, 51, said she wanted to break the taboo among her generation about speaking about the subject.

MPs listening were visibly moved by the speech, and afterwards Thomson tweeted she was "overwhelmed" by the response.

Here is her speech in full:

I am going to relay an event that happened to me many years ago. I want to give a very personal perspective to help people, both in this place and outside, understand one element of sexual violence against women.

When I was 14, I was raped. As is common, it was by somebody who was known to me. He had offered to walk me home from a youth event. In those days, everybody walked everywhere - it was quite common. It was early evening. It was not dark. I was wearing— I am imagining and guessing—jeans and a sweatshirt. I knew my way around where I lived - I was very comfortable - and we went a slightly differently way, but I did not think anything of it. He told me that he wanted to show me something in a wooded area. At that point, I must admit that I was alarmed. I did have a warning bell, but I overrode that warning bell because I knew him and, therefore, there was a level of trust in place. To be honest, looking back at that point, I do not think I knew what rape was. It was not something that was talked about. My mother never talked to me about it, and I did not hear other girls or women talking about it.

It was mercifully quick and I remember first of all feeling surprise, then fear, then horror as I realised that I quite simply could not escape, because obviously he was stronger than me. There was no sense, even initially, of any sexual desire from him, which, looking back again, I suppose I find odd. My senses were absolutely numbed, and thinking about it now, 37 years later, I cannot remember hearing anything when I replay it in my mind. As a former professional musician who is very auditory, I find that quite telling. I now understand that your subconscious brain—not your conscious brain—decides on your behalf how you should respond: whether you take flight, whether you fight or whether you freeze. And I froze, I must be honest.

Afterwards I walked home alone. I was crying, I was cold and I was shivering. I now realise, of course, that that was the shock response. I did not tell my mother. I did not tell my father. I did not tell my friends. And I did not tell the police. I bottled it all up inside me. I hoped briefly—and appallingly—that I might be pregnant so that that would force a situation to help me control it. Of course, without support, the capacity and resources that I had within me to process it were very limited.

I was very ashamed. I was ashamed that I had “allowed this to happen to me”. I had a whole range of internal conversations: “I should have known. Why did I go that way? Why did I walk home with him? Why didn’t I understand the danger? I deserved it because I was too this, too that.” I felt that I was spoiled and impure, and I really felt revulsion towards myself.

Of course, I detached from the child that I had been up until then. Although in reality, at the age of 14, that was probably the start of my sexual awakening, at that time, remembering back, sex was “something that men did to women”, and perhaps this incident reinforced that early belief.​
I briefly sought favour elsewhere and I now understand that even a brief period of hypersexuality is about trying to make sense of an incident and reframing the most intimate of acts. My oldest friends, with whom I am still friends, must have sensed a change in me, but because I never told them they did not know of the cause. I allowed myself to drift away from them for quite a few years. Indeed, I found myself taking time off school and staying at home on my own, listening to music and reading and so on.

I did have a boyfriend in the later years of school and he was very supportive when I told him about it, but I could not make sense of my response - and it is my response that gives weight to the event. I carried that guilt, anger, fear, sadness and bitterness for years.

When I got married 12 years later, I felt that I had a duty tell my husband. I wanted him to understand why there was this swaddled kernel of extreme emotion at the very heart of me, which I knew he could sense. But for many years I simply could not say the words without crying—I could not say the words. It was only in my mid-40s that I took some steps to go and get help.

It had a huge effect on me and it fundamentally - and fatally - undermined my self-esteem, my confidence and my sense of self-worth. Despite this, I am blessed in my life: I have been happily married for 25 years. But if this was the effect of one small, albeit significant, event in my life stage, how must it be for those women who are carrying it on a day-by-day basis?

I thought carefully about whether I should speak about this today, and it was people’s intake of breath and the comment, “What? You’re going to talk about this?”, that motivated me to do it, because there is still a taboo about sharing this kind of information. Certainly for people of my generation, it is truly shocking to talk in public about this sort of thing.

As has been said, rape does not just affect the woman; it affects the family as well. Before my mother died early of cancer, I really wanted to tell her, but I could not bring myself to do it. I have a daughter and if something happened to her and she could not share it with me, I would be appalled. It was possibly cowardly, but it was an act of love that meant that I protected my mother.

As an adult, of course I now know that rape is not about sex at all - it is all about power and control, and it is a crime of violence. I still pick up on when the myths of rape are perpetuated form a male perspective: “Surely you could have fought him off. Did you scream loudly enough?” And the suggestion by some men that a woman is giving subtle hints or is making it up is outrageous. Those assumptions put the woman at the heart of cause, when she should be at the heart of effect. A rape happens when a man makes a decision to hurt someone he feels he can control. Rapes happen because of the rapist, not because of the victim.

We women in our society have to stand up for each other. We have to be courageous. We have to call things out and say where things are wrong. We have to support and nurture our sisters as we do with our sons. Like many women of my age, I have on occasion encountered other aggressive actions towards me, both in business and in politics. But one thing that I realise now is that I am not scared and he was. I am not scared. I am not a victim. I am a survivor.

Julia Rampen is the editor of The Staggers, The New Statesman's online rolling politics blog. She was previously deputy editor at Mirror Money Online and has worked as a financial journalist for several trade magazines.